Tibet’s Amdo Tushuo 100MW CSP hits first solar field commissioning milestone

Dongfang Boiler heliostats at Amdo County 100 MW CSP project

Dongfang Boiler’s first milestone a success at world’s highest CSP tower project

Dongfang Boiler has achieved “first light” at the 100MW Amdo Tushuo tower concentrated solar power plant in Tibet, the China Solar Thermal Alliance reported on Aug. 27. This involves reflecting sunlight from the first of the heliostats onto a single spot on the project’s 185-meter receiver tower, to begin the aiming strategy for the entire solar field of heliostats.

The plant, sited at 4,650 meters in Amdo County, Nagqu, in the Tanggula Mountain area of Tibet, is the world’s highest-altitude tower CSP project. The Amdo Tushuo project (map) combines 100MW of Tower CSP including 8 hours of thermal energy storage with 900MW of PV. The milestone marks the start of heliostat field commissioning, with tracking accuracy tested against extreme winds, UV exposure and temperature swings at altitude.

Dongfang Boiler, which independently developed and manufactured the heliostats, and now has a single-line daily production capacity of 6,000 square meters, delivered nearly 16,000 heliostats for the project, with a reported industry standard tracking accuracy of 1.07 milliradians.

Full-capacity grid connection is expected later this year. The plant is projected to generate approximately 260 million kWh annually, serving around 50,000 households and displacing 60,000 tonnes of standard coal and 165,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year. Operators say it will help ease winter power shortages in northern Tibet’s grid.

Why it matters: This is the first step in solving the precise collaborative control challenge of heliostat clusters in ultra-high-altitude environments, laying an unshakable technical foundation for the subsequent comprehensive joint commissioning and testing of tens of thousands of heliostats.
Context: Dongfang Boiler’s 1.07 mrad accuracy puts its system at the cutting edge of commercial deployment, and in unprededented climate conditions. Achieving stable heliostat tracking at this altitude is a first, given the extreme conditions: strong winds, intense UV, and large day-night temperature swings. Historically, commercial CSP fields targeted a tracking accuracy of 1.5 to 3.5 mrad. But China’s current record-holder for batch tracking precision has now broken into sub-milliradian territory. Cosin Solar has achieved even greater accuracy at its 350MW project under construction at Wutumeiren in Golmud, with its 89,000 intelligent heliostats achieving a certified batch tracking accuracy of 0.9 mrad.

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